WICC WEBE damaged tower removal

Damaged in last year’s F1 tornado, this thirty foot Rohn 25-G tower needed to be removed from the roof. It actually went faster than I though it would, the worst part being moving the 4 foot tower sections down to the salvage truck via elevator. Naturally, the day we choose to do this is the same day that one of the two elevators servicing the seventh floor is out of order.

Damaged Rohn 25G STL tower on roof of studio

This was the same tornado that picked up a twenty ton roof top air conditioner and deposited it in the parking lot. Luck would have it that no one was killed or injured.

Rohn 25G buckled tower section

Using a circular saw with a metal blade, a sawsall and a hand grinder, the tower was cut up into four foot sections. The sections, brackets and tower base were taken to the scrap yard and disposed of.

Tower and transmission lines ready to be removed from roof

There were several lengths of unused 7/8 inch foam coax, broken antennas, RG-59- RG-58, RG-6, rotor cable, etc that we cleaned off of the roof and tower.

The after picture

A good little project to have completed.

The studio build out for WEBE is also nearly done. August will mark one year of our company’s involvement at WICC/WEBE. I was looking around today and comparing the difference between when we started to now. Many things have been done.

It is kind of amazing the randomness of destruction. The tower remaining had a pair of stacked yagis on 450 mhz for the Marti system, plus a whip mounted out about ten feet from the tower. I don’t know if the broken tower had a larger load, or was just in the wrong spot. The satellite dishes are about 50 feet away from all of this and they were not effected.

The tower that went over in the storm had a 161Mhz dipole mounted at the top I left the 161Mhz
antenna on the roof. I guess Ann had that tossed out along with all the radios. It was a good antenna. I guess as there is no news department or traffic plane there is no need for the 161.7Mhz two way radio until there is a emergency disaster and the cell phones will not work and you need to go live from the seen and no two way gear in the van or studio.

Actually, I think the 161 antenna is still up there, laying along side of the elevator house. Nothing on the roof was touched until we started dismantling it on Tuesday. As far as the news department and traffic department goes, the only guy I know is Jim Bucannon, basically there is no one else. The 161 radios were removed and put in storage for now, along with the 455 marti gear.